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Red Bull team principal Christian Horner stated that Max Verstappen's car sustained "quite a lot of damage" after colliding with a bollard during the Miami Grand Prix, and the team intends to analyse how much this may have influenced his pace in the second half.
Verstappen was leading the race until he raced over a chicane at Turns 14/15, causing him to dislodge the bollard and carry it with him before it landed on the track at the Turn 16 exit, necessitating the use of a Virtual Safety Car while it was cleared by a marshal. After the incident, Verstappen requested that the crew inspect his front wing, and he then made his first pit stop at the end of Lap 23 after the VSC period had ended. As other cars pitted, Lando Norris took the lead when a full Safety Car was deployed on Lap 27 following an accident involving Logan Sargeant and Kevin Magnussen, allowing the Briton to make a speedy pit stop and return to the track in first place. From there, Norris was able to close the distance on Verstappen in P2, which was at seven seconds when the McLaren driver crossed the line for his maiden Formula One victory. Reflecting on the race afterwards, Horner stated that the damage on Verstappen's car from the previous bollard collision meant that finishing second was a positive result. "He hit the bollard around Lap 20, and that's actually done quite a lot of damage to the underside of the car, so we'll have to look at exactly what the effect of that has been," the Team Principal said as quoted by Formula 1. "He had enough pace at that point, he was pulling clear of Oscar [Piastri] behind and Lando before he picked up that damage. Obviously thereafter we then pitted. The Safety Car came out at the best time for Lando and gave him essentially a free stop, but obviously not great for us because then you're on [tyres that are] five, six, seven laps older. And with the damage, I think second place was actually a decent result," he added. Talking about if he had felt any damage to the car following his contact with the bollard, Verstappen stated that it "didn't feel different". "Maybe it was already damaged. I don't know. I mean I hit that thing and then my pace was the same, so I didn't really know if there was damage," he continued. (ANI)
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